Letter from Linus Pauling to H.C. Longuet-Higgins July 11, 1955

Pauling writes that he has read Roberts' paper on the electronic structure of an icosahedron of boron atoms. Pauling finds a flaw in Longuet-Higgins’ argument that the tetragonal structure for boron reported by Hoard cannot be of the closed-shell type. Pauling notes that if this assumption were correct, the boron-boron distance between icosahedra would be significantly less than within an icosahedron; the x-ray evidence does not support this.
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